


I'll never die when I'm dead

by charleybradburies



Category: NCIS
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe - Future, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Jewish Character, Choices, Christmas, Community: 1_million_words, Dark Past, E-mail, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Family Issues, Family Loss, Female Friendship, Female Jewish Character, Female Relationships, Female-Centric, Future, Future Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I Made Myself Cry, I'm Sorry, Introspection, Israel, Israeli character(s), Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, Loneliness, Look At Your Life Look At Your Choices, Loss, Loss of Identity, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Parent(s), Lost Love, Names, Near Future, Not Canon Compliant, POV Female Character, Past Relationship(s), Post-Loss, THERE IS A JEWS IN SPACE TAG WHAT, Team as Family, What Have I Done, Why Did I Write This?, Winter, thats how you know it's an au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s nothing here, no one, alone save her grief - or anything she chooses.</p>
<p>Ziva David Appreciation Week | Day 5: "Alternate" Universe</p>
<p>Title from Halsey's "Control."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll never die when I'm dead

Why does this have to be so hard? Every day is hard. 

Waiting in line and looking at this young lady at the counter with bright eyes and a nametag that reads Tali is very hard, far more than it realistically should be. Ziva will only have to speak with her for a moment, only to get her ticket to Italy, and then it will be over - but she knows that the memory will stick with her, because of those four letters.

She wonders whether it would be easier to go back, go home, to Washington, to pretend the past couple of years have all been a harsh dream, that she exists and has a place in the world without family. But she has nothing left, nothing at all. Her greatest memento, the one she always kept close to her heart, her necklace, is probably locked in a box somewhere, or maybe lost, in Tony’s apartment. Abby, she knows, would have kept all the things she’d given her, as would Gibbs.

She’s nothing here, no one, alone save her grief - or anything she chooses. She can freelance, she can stand by her father’s grave, she can pray in some of the holiest places known to humankind. But she remembers going back from Somalia, remembers both dreading her former team seeing her in the state she was in and praying for one more chance, one more movie reference from Tony, and she remembers looking into his eyes and hearing him say words she’d never hoped to hear, and they set her alive regardless. 

“Couldn’t live without you...I guess.” 

He was not guessing. This, she knows - he had both truth serum and conviction in him...and sorrow, sorrow she’d caused, and sorrow that kept on blooming, into something that was impossible to tame. If he can learn to live without her - which he can, she knows he can, and despite the bravado he’s always been stronger, better, braver than he thinks he is - then she can be content with the choice she made. 

At least, that’s what she’d thought when he’d left, when she’d bid him adieu from the airport with tears in her eyes - fewer than there had come to be later, thinking about it on her own. 

She was always on her own. In her line of work...there were so many reasons, so many excuses.

The worst part was that she got it from her father. 

The inability to be content, even if you are certain you’ve made the right decision.

Some days, she was _not_ certain. 

The opera has become a place for mourning not only her sister, but a great deal more. 

The man in front of her is called to the flight check-in desk, and she realizes she’ll have to make a decision shortly. 

She could go anywhere, be anyone she pleased; would it really please her to face the music of what it is that she’s abandoned? She’d been abandoned herself, plenty of times, and yet she survived...not that this was any sort of grief-heavy life she’d wish on her allies, perhaps not even on her enemies, and most certainly not on people that she loved. 

A tear streaks down her cheek, one she hadn’t even realized had been threatening to do so. 

An email notification pops up on her phone, a standard holiday greeting message - thankfully, an interfaith one, which is refreshing. She’d been getting plenty of spam messages wishing her a Merry Christmas - but even if she consciously celebrated the day, she’d have no one to celebrate with, not on Earth, anyway. 

She pulls the notification down to see the email address, just barely catching it before she’s beckoned to the counter to purchase her ticket and check her suitcase: asciuto@ncis.navy.mil.

She’s not as surprised as she, in hindsight, might have thought to expect; but she does still think of Washington when she thinks of home, after all. 

Abby, however, is very, and very pleasantly, surprised.


End file.
